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Tony Bethell: Real life hero of The Great Escape remembered by family with dream of Bethell House
Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Telegraph Media Group & Hospice Caledon Staff)
Flight Lieutenant Tony Bethell, late husband of Lorna Bethell was one of the 76 air force officers to break out of Stalag Luft III during "The Great Escape"in 1944. He was one of only 26 prisoners to survive the escape.
Hospice Caledon's Bethell House is being named in honor of the late Mr. Bethell following a generous donation from Lorna Bethell , in loving memory of her husband Tony and her son Jamie. Mr. and Mrs. Bethell had been residents of the Town of Caledon since the early 1990s.
During the spring of 1944, Bethell was involved in the daring scheme to dig three tunnels out of the camp. He was part of what was called Operation 200, so named because the target was to get 200 prisoners out.
In the end, 76 allied prisoners eventually escaped - all but three, including Bethell, were captured - and 50 of those were executed.The story of the Great Escape was made into a 1963 Hollywood film featuring stars David McCallum, Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasance, James Garner and Steve McQueen.
Bethell did not like James Clavell's Hollywood screenplay of the story in which McQueen and the others were taken by the Gestapo and shot en masse in an open field, according to Lorna Bethell.
"That was entirely untrue," Mrs. Bethell said. "There was no mass execution. The 50 doomed men were led out of the prison and executed in small groups over a period of several weeks."Bethell was a fighter pilot with the British Royal Air Force before moving to Canada in 1955. He was shot down over Holland in 1942, taken prisoner and spent three years in Stalag Luft III - the German PoW camp built for allied air force prisoners captured in the war.
Stalag Luft, situated southeast of Berlin, was supposed to be more secure than other prison camps. But a daring and intricately crafted tunnel escape was planned by prisoners so that Germans couldn't go and fight at the front line.
Two hundred men were supposed to slip through "Harry" tunnel, which ran for 365ft, 28ft below the surface; but the 77th was spotted by a guard around 5am, and the alarm sounded. Bethell was posted to "Leicester Square", the second halfway house along the tunnel. He was to pull 20 men through until relieved by escaper number 65, and then lie in the woods to wait for nine more, according to the U.K. Telegram.
But after pulling out 12 men, Bethell had to sit in his cramped underground space for 45 minutes, which made him feel that he was condemned to a permanent coffin; finally, the next man arrived and explained that someone had got stuck and had to be pulled back while the tunnel was patched up.
Shortly after Bethell's group had assembled outside the wire, they heard a shot, signalling that the escape had been discovered. They broke into twos, and Bethell went off with "Cookie" Long, hoping to cross the Czech border, about 40 miles away.
Snow and flooding forced them to change their minds and they headed toward Frankfurt, hoping to hop on a freight train and escape to Sweden. They walked along a railway line, slept in a barn at night then started to travel in daylight. They were captured at Benau.
From there they were returned to a large cell with other escaped PoWs, from which they were moved to a Gestapo prison at Gorlitz. While Bethell was left, Long was taken away and shot - one of 50 recaptured escapers executed on Hitler's orders. Only three of the escapers reached England - two Norwegians and a Dutchman who were RAF pilots.
"Seventy-six got out, seventy-three were recaptured and then Hitler's direct, specific order was shoot 50,"said Hartland MacDougall, Bethell's brother-in-law.
Bethell was among 23 participants in the Great Escape who were recaptured but weren't killed, he said.
"He kept a log book while he was in camp, but he never talked about his experience at all, other than the odd thing," his wife, Lorna MacDougall, said. "None of them did. They did not talk about it.
"Fifty years went by before there was any official recognition, which infuriated him, until a public memorial service was finally held in 1994."Bethell sailed, played golf and cross-country skied, and was a great outdoorsman.
"He loved flowers, but not looking after them and working in the garden; that was my job," Lorna Bethell said. "His department was the woods and the fields. He loved his tractor, and was never happier than on his SkiDoo making trails through the woods."Bethell died of cancer at home, supported by his wife, a daughter who is a nurse and a son-in-law and two close family friends who are doctors. Lorna Bethell said she is determined that others in the community requiring palliative care not available from a hospital and not fortunate enough to have the at-home support afforded her husband, should have a place close to home where they can be cared for.
The son of a colonial administrator, Richard Anthony Bethell was born on April 9 1922 at Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika. Tony and his brother lived for some years in Gibraltar, where their father was state treasurer, then returned home after his death.
Young Tony was educated at Sherborne, where he became head boy. Early in the war there was an air raid on the school, which almost resulted in his being expelled for being outside the shelter at the time.
Joining the RAF in February 1941 he was sent to America for pilot training in Georgia, Alabama and Florida. He was then posted to a training unit at Hawarden, before joining No 268 Squadron.
Bethell spent much time flying "rhubarbs", or low level sweeps. On November 26 1942, during an operation over Holland, he spotted and shot down an Me 109 and shortly after sighted a Junkers 52 transport aircraft, which he also shot down. These were the squadron's first successes, and the first of hundreds to fall to Mustangs during the war.
Eleven days later he took off at 9.15am and was flying with three other Mustangs when they were met by flak at the Dutch coast. His aircraft was damaged and then hit again 20ft above the ground; after crash-landing at around 10am, he was soon in German hands.
Bethell was transferred to an Amsterdam jail and then Stalag Luft III. As the Russians approached the camp in January 1945, Bethell and the other PoWs were marched from Sagan, near the Oder river, to Lubeck, where they arrived three days before the war ended.
With the return of peace, Bethell went into business in Africa, joining the trading company Gellatly Hankey to serve at Khartoum and Addis Ababa; but he became bored and rejoined the RAF as a flight lieutenant in 1949.
After a series of specialist courses, he was a navigator instructor, then personal assistant to Air Chief Marshal Sir George Pirie.
On returning to Britain in 1953 he was posted to No 145 Squadron at Celle, flying Vampires, before becoming a flight commander on No 16 Squadron, also operating Vampires from Celle, an airfield close to the East German border. He finally retired from the RAF in June 1955, after which he left to set up home in Canada.
Bethell settled down happily across the Atlantic, where he was employed in the brokerage business in Montreal for many years, and then worked for Elican, a Belgian company. He later moved into money management.
He often returned to England, and attended several reunions of Great Escape veterans. But he was no fan of the film The Great Escape, which he felt should have been made in black and white.
On retiring in the early 1990s he and his wife Lorna moved to a farm at Caledon, north of Toronto, where he spent much time on a John Deere tractor, cutting fallow hayfields.
Former British naval officer Sir Hugh Cubitt, a friend for more than 50 years delivered Bethell's eulogy in February, 2004, recalled his charm, strong character, zest for life and his dazzling smile. Bethell had been 81 at the time of his death.
Cubitt said Bethell never understood why he survived the ordeal when 50 of his comrades were shot.
"Perhaps, he surmised, it was because he was only 19, the youngest of them," Cubitt said. "Perhaps, because with his clear blue eyes, the Gestapo saw him as a near-perfect Aryan specimen. Perhaps, it was pure luck.
"It was a searing experience which never left him."Read more about Tony Bethell and The Great Escape
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